Key West !!!! - Mile 1244 + 140

We are in Key West!! We made it down the entire Atlantic ICW and down the Keys via Hawk Channel.

 

 

We stayed on a mooring ball in Marathon for 3 nights. There is a great park there, Crane Point, where we spent a whole day. It has trails through a huge mangrove swamp with tropical fish, a wild bird rescue center, a tabby house (oyster shell cement house from 1904), a butterfly garden, and an authentic Florida cracker house. Simple construction of a single room house raised a foot above the ground to keep out bugs and snakes and with high roof and porches for the heat. This park in the middle of the over-developed Keys along with several other historic areas, houses, and parks along the way have really left us with a strong sense of appreciation for those that worked so hard to preserve natural and historic sites.

 

We had every bit of 6 foot seas during our final run to Key West. I wanted to try one more snorkeling reef enroute so we did some advanced mooring pick up in high winds and seas with Linda driving and me grabbing the mooring line with the boat hook. Everything went great but just after we were secured on the mooring I detected that we were ever so slightly over weight on the starboard side. Thinking quickly, I flipped the boat hook overboard to correct the imbalance. I'm sure it was the right choice. Sadly, Linda declared 25 feet too deep to retrieve it so we'll have to procure another.

We are settled now at the Key West Bight Marina which is right in the heart of the action in Key West. The Marina staff were busy as we came in but other boaters jumped up and helped us get into a very tight space with a strong wind blowing us away from the dock.  We are close to Mallory Square where Sundown is celebrated every night.

 

Today we worked on replacing our batteries. Every year batteries loose 5 to 10 percent of their capacity and ours were 6 years old. Add to that batteries do not like to be run all the way down to no charge especially if you leave them that way for a few days. The sailing has been great in Hawk Channel and anchoring out and moorings are cheep. The down side is that you are not hooked to shore power for a nightly recharge or running the engines to charge the aging batteries. The refrigerator and autopilot plus lights at night etc. put a demand on the batteries and ours just gave up. Luckily, Catalina built in two batteries with a switch to select one, two, or both and I always put it on a single battery for anchoring so we were able to switch to the other to start the engine.  Anyway, West Marine is close to our marina in Key West and the same poor guy that helped us dock got the honor of helping me lug two 135 pound batteries aboard.

Finished in time to appreciate the sunset.

 

Linda will spend the week in Key West and her sister will visit here while I get back to the office for a week. Next we will work the boat back North a bit and find a spot to put her up for the Winter with an eye toward a Spring trip to bring her back to the Chesapeake.  I think we will close out the blog of the trip here. 1244 miles traveled. A great trip that really gave us the flavor of the Southern US coast. The boat took a little wear but that is to be expected and the crew is still in great shape.